Andrei Khrapavitski: Belarusian American Blog

An interesting article was published on one of Zianon Pazniak’s websites:

These days Belarusians in NY fail to get connected with Belarusian writers on the phone. An automated system blurts in Russian “The line is malfunctioned,” “Call back later.”
And this goes on day in, day out. The first who lost patience was Valancina Jakimovic. She phoned MasterCall company, via which she tried to call Michas Skobla. In response to her inquiry, she was told that the company had nothing to do with it. Because of the political approaches in Belarus, this phone number and a range of others had been blocked for communication by the Belarusian part.

The full article is available in Belarusian here.

NPR (National Public Radio) aired today a report on Belarus’ current political situation. One of the interviewees was a current Muskie fellow and an editor of Student Thought, Iryna Vidanava. You can listen to the piece here.

I don’t remember if I posted a link to Tobias on Belarus, a terrific blog about our political comings and goings, but just following br23’s footsteps, I wanted to draw your attention to a nice example of how an outside person can be persuaded of rightfulness of Lukashenka’s policies. An anonymous guy from Latvia inspired a discussion about Belarusian political system. Want to chip in on that?

A couple of days ago, Ukrainian independent election observation organization, Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), published their report on the monitoring results of election campaign from December 26 till January 26 of 2006.
CVU assumes the elections run so far so good. Minor violations occur, parties seem to be unprepared to participate in elections on proportional basis. According to the document, the evidences of such situation are formation of nominal blocs instead of ideological, irresponsible attitude toward presenting candidates to the composition of the election commissions, lack of inner-party discipline and democracy in forming candidates’ lists. But still, the election campaign is going on freely and has a competitive character.
Belarus’ elections, which happen to coincide with the parliamentary race in neighboring Ukraine, are different… Way different! Belarusian Partnerstva (Partnership) stands for our version of CVU. Unlike their Ukrainian counterparts, Belarusian independent election monitors hardly will come up with any optimistic reports. The leadership of Partnerstva is currently in jail. The possible charges could be managing an unregistered organization or even a libel upon the president. Partnerstva members throughout the country are chased after as if they were wild animals or extremists. And their real “guilt” is that they want to organize a fair, nonpartisan monitoring of this already off-the-wall campaign.

Concerns were reaffirmed about the regime’s crackdown on any surfacing of a personified alternative to Lukashenka. The last few days of the presidential race were like a bad dream to many opposition’s activists, NGO members and even journalists. Social Democratic newspaper Zhoda has been officially promised to be buried for publication of the infamous cartoons on Prophet Muhammad. Isn’t it a cute reason to silence an oppositional edition?
The leadership of election monitors, Partnerstva, has been thrown to prison. Definitely, fair observation after the elections is not what the regime craves for. Both Milinkevich’s and Kazulin’s campaigners are faced with a permanent influx of dangers – houses of some were searched, printed materials confiscated, some of my friends were interrogated, and some acquaintances ended up in jail. Almost on a daily basis, students get expelled for political reasons. Friedman’s “flat world” keeps on turning (or rather “leveling”). Somewhat farther away from Belarus.

Here is a small selection of policy briefs and analyses of Belarus’ situation in 2005-2006: (more…)

Alaxandar Milinkevich began his campaign tour in Babruisk and Mahilou. In both cities, his meetings were successful – in sum around 800 people attended, local authorities failed to hinder the events.
Today Belarusian and Russian versions of Milinkevich’s website acquired a new look. Now it has become more consistent with his campaign symbols.
Hajdukevich had meetings in Minsk region, whereas Kazulin stayed in Minsk, preparing for a breakthrough promotion campaign.

Kazulin boldly kicks off his campaign. Surprise-surprise… The “dark horse” of the presidential race has made an aggressive speech at the CEC sitting, which was hurrayed by a few Belarusian bloggers and chatters. Kazulin said that Lukashenka had to step down from his post for the period of the campaign according to Belarusian Electoral Law, which allowed an incumbent to perform his duties, when running for the second term but not for the third one.
“Thus Lukashenka, who becomes a presidential nominee for the third time, as of today is supposed to take a recess in accordance with Belarus’ Electoral Codex, Article 77, which has not been annulled,” said Kazulin.
After the registration ceremony, Kazulin practically had to storm the National press center where he had been granted to conduct a press conference. But when he showed up there today the security refused to let him in. But he pushed through and talked to journalists in the foyer.
And today Belarusian leading internet-stat counter, Akavita, rose Kazulin’s flags. Above everything else on the site, there appeared a huge banner in support for the former rector of Belarusian State University. And right below Akavita’s logo now we can see a note – “Supported by A. Kazulin.” It is interesting how much it cost to obtain support of one of the leading sites in the country.
Also today the following rumor spread out:

Kazulin’s Ph.D. is plagiarized, an exact replica of another Ph.D. thesis from some Moscow scientist. I read about it today in a blog of a well-known Belarusian political science professor Koktysh from Moscow State University. He claimed he saw the two xerox-copies, and that it looks very credible. As professor Koktysh put it in his blog, “a simulacrum of a scientist has become a simulacrum of a politician.” (cited from br23.net)

And in the last two issues of Nasha Niva, Kazulin was bitterly criticized by a few authors, and a political scientist Vitali Silitski noted that it was Milinkevich’s mistake to agree to negotiate with Kazulin without waiting to see who he really was – a true opposition politician or a pseudo-oppositionist. And now it’s kind of too late to ignore him. The flame has gone pretty wild.

Just as predicted, all four hopefuls were registered during today’s solemn sitting of CEC in the Republic Palace.
A few hilarious things were reported by RFE\RL. First off, nominees were seated not in the alphabetic order, but Lukashenka was separated from Milinkevich and Kazulin by Hajdukevich. And thus he flunked from shaking hands with both oppositional candidates.
Milinkevich left the building through the main entrance where he was greeted by a group of around 200 supporters, and Lukashenka had to leave through the backdoor.
Milinkevich was registered first but also was the only one who was not voted for unanimously – three CEC members said nay to his nomination.

It is a late night in Belarus. Yarmoshina, and all the candidates must be amidst their REM stage of dreams by now. Or maybe not, as tomorrow it is going to be a day when we will get an answer to a worrisome, itching question – how many names will be on a slate list on the elections day.
Alaxandar Milinkevich aspires to gather a crowd of supporters at the doorsteps to the Republic Palace where the solemn sitting will take place and the lucky persons will be presented with the official recognition of their candidacies.
So if Milinkevich makes it, he will be greeted by a crowd of adherents. If not, the CEC might get booed by whoever gets out to the October Square. Today, however, the Solidarity action on the same square was brutally dispersed.
What will the new day bring? Hours are left until we might get answers.